Right, i have searched around for this and i am now confused.

My gear lever is extremely stiff and third is really hard to find. If you put the car in neutral the you can move the gear lever left and right and it will stay where you put it rather than spring back.

I have read that this is the cable becoming seized up but everything seems to move just fine. I can manually move the selector thing on top of the gear box up and down, but it seems there is very little resistance there, so what actually moves the gear lever back to the centre?

What exactly has become seized if anything or is something else causing this issue? here is a photo.

I arm armed with a tube of grease and ready to go :P

I am armed with a tube of grease and ready to go :P

As always :P:P

That does look quite rusty around there maybe a general splattering would help

Well.. i figured it could all do with a good clean so i just took apart the whole lot. Gave it all a bit of a file and a rub with some fine emery paper, lubed it all up and reassembled and what do you know.. its all fixed